Today's News

Many may see the Los Alamos Homestead Tour as a boost to create tourism or way to enrich the history of the county. For the descendants of the homesteaders, the tour strikes a much deeper and more personal note.

“No area is made up of just one people. There are all types of stories,” said Joe Gutierrez, founder and former president of the Pajarito Plateau Homesteaders Association (PPHA). Gutierrez was invited to join the Fuller Lodge Historic Districts Advisory Board and serve on the Homestead Tour subcommittee when the project began. He served as liaison to the homesteader descendants.

During a Director’s Classified Colloquium May 10, former Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory Director Harold Agnew spent more than two hours recalling his history with Los Alamos from the very beginnings of the Manhattan Project, through his nine-year directorship that ended in 1979.

He displayed a remarkable ability to remember names, rattling off whole lists of people who worked on projects with him more than 60 years ago.

Agnew spoke of practical jokes and Washington hijinks that drew laughter throughout the talk, that was formatted as discussion with laboratory historian Alan Carr and Glen McDuff of Surety Systems Engineering (W-16).

In February 2010, University of New Mexico-Los Alamos Executive Director Cedric Page said after voters rejected a mil levy, the Advisory Board would wait a year or two until the economy turns around, and would again pose the question to voters.

It appears that time has come.

The board mulled over the idea of having another mil levy election during its meeting Monday evening.

The Albuquerque Isotopes were nipped in a close contest Monday at Salt Lake City.
Salt Lake City Bees starting pitcher Garrett Richards (4-1) held the Isotopes to just two runs through seven innings as the Bees won the third game of the teams’ four-game series 3-2.
It was the first win of the series for Salt Lake City (19-20) against the red-hot Isotopes (24-15), who have won nine of their last 12 decisions, including five of seven on their current eight-game road trip.
Richards gave up just four hits through seven innings to pick up the win.

The local chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association hosted its Jerry Bower Memorial 5K Run/Walk Saturday.
The 5K attracted 20 runners and walkers Saturday. Proceeds from the event went to support research in the field of Alzheimer’s disease.
The top finishers in this year’s 5K were Chris Buntain and Nikol Strother, both of Los Alamos. Buntain finished the race in 22 minutes, 14 seconds, more than five minutes better than runner-up James Keane. Strother posted a time of 24:26, nearly three-and-a-half minutes faster than Elizabeth Wilson.

Kobe Bryant hit his only shot that really mattered, then celebrated by slapping hands with Justin Timberlake. In the closing seconds of a Game 7 playoff win, the stars were aligning in Los Angeles once again, just like old times.
Except this was a first-round playoff series against a seriously less talented opponent. And these aren’t anything like old times.
The Lakers used to swagger through the playoffs with an attitude, mostly because Bryant would always seem to find a way to make them win. Now, after a rout at the hands of Oklahma City in Game 1 of the conference semifinals, even Bryant may not have anything left in his bag of tricks to use against the Thunder.

Shortly after delegates to the May 5 Libertarian Party convention in Las Vegas, Nev., picked Gary Johnson as their 2012 presidential nominee, Atlantic magazine’s Conor Friederdorf characterized the former New Mexico governor as “arguably the strongest candidate they’ve ever run.”
Admittedly that may not be saying a lot. The best any previous Libertarian presidential candidate has done was in 1980 when Ed Clark won 1.1 percent of the general election vote.
Nonetheless, Friederdorf may be onto something when he pegs Johnson to do better in the November election than his Libertarian Party predecessors.

On Friday, the University of New Mexico’s School of Medicine graduated 62 new physicians. One of them was my son Eric.
The parents were probably seeing, in those black gowns and caps, a much smaller version of the doctor-to-be, riding tricycles, catching bugs, playing sports, dressing up for Halloween.
We can also assume that these shining stars owed their presence here to the influence of some key people in their lives. In our case it was Miss Wolpert.